Laser chemical vapor deposition of nitrogen-doped SiC electrode for electrochemical detection of uric acid

Reasonable design and construction of high-performance electrodes are desirable for developing non-enzymatic electrochemical sensors for uric acid (UA). Herein, N-doped SiC film was prepared as an electrochemical electrode using a novel laser chemical vapor deposition (LCVD) method. Compared with its undoped counterpart, the doped electrode exhibited a low detection limit of 0.77 mu M and a high detection sensitivity of 9.75 mu A mu M-1 cm-2 owing to its large active sites and fast electron transfer rate. Furthermore, the as-developed electrode clearly exhibited immunity towards the coexisting interfering species, such as dopamine and ascorbic acid, and facilitated the quantitative analysis of UA in real-world samples. In addition, the effects of N doping on electrochemical sensing were verified via theoretical calculations by investigating adsorption energy and Bader charge. Our works verify the feasibility of introducing N into SiC to enhance UA sensing performance and fabricating onchip electrochemical sensors, which may spur the development of advanced and portable SiC-based biosensors for health monitoring.